I        II        I      1      I      I  •     •          ••• 

3  1822024927915 


A  DEBATE 


CLARENCE  S.DARROW 
ARTHUR  M.LEWIS 


UN  VtRS  TY  OF  CAL  FORN  A  SAN  DIEGO 


31822024927915 


Social  Sciences  humanities  Library 

Un,vers,ty  of  California,  San  Di 
P,ease  Note:  This  item  is  subject  to 

Date  Due 


MARX  versus  TOLSTOY 


MARX  versus  TOLSTOY 
A  DEBATE 


CLARENCE  S.JDARROW 
ARTHUR  M.  LEWIS 


CHICAGO 
CHARLES  H.  KERR  &  COMPANY 

CO-OPERATIVE 


JOHN    F.  HIGGINS 

PRINTER  AND  BINDER 


376-382    MONROE  STREET 
CHICAGO.      ILLINOIS 


PREFACE 

This  discussion  treats  an  impor- 
tant question  that  has  received  no 
specific  and  thorough  examination 
elsewhere,  notwithstanding  its  grav- 
ity. Mr.  Darrow  is  probably  the 
foremost  of  the  American  represen- 
tatives of  the  non-resistance  theory, 
and  his  case  is  stated  in  these  pages 
more  pointedly  and  forcibly  than  in 
any  of  his  published  works.  The 
arguments  launched  against  Mr. 
Darrow  will,  I  think,  satisfy  the  op- 
ponents of  the  non-resistance  phi- 
losophy. 

ARTHUR  M.  LEWIS. 


Chicago,  Mar.  21,  1911. 


DARROW'S  FIRST  SPEECH 


Marx  versus  Tolstoy: 
A  Debate 

DARROW'S  FIRST  SPEECH 

As  this  is  a  Sunday  morning,  and 
a  semi-religious  question,  I  take  for 
my  text  the  38th  and  39th  verses  in 
the  5th  chapter  of  Matthew.  I  can- 
not quote  it  literally.  It  is  quite  a 
time  since  I  have  read  it.  But  I 
know  the  import  of  it. 

"Ye  have  heard  that  it  hath  been 
said,"  I  am  quoting  from  Matthew, 
"An  eye  for  an  eye,  and  a  tooth  for  a 
tooth.  But  I  say  unto  you:  Resist 
not  evil.  But  whosoever  shall  smite 
you  on  the  right  cheek,  turn  to  him 
the  other  also." 

I  do  not  quote  this  because  Mat- 
thew wrote  it.  I  really  do  not  know 


12  MARX    VERSUS   TOLSTOY 

whether  he  did  or  not;  and  I  care  a 
great  deal  less.  I  could  not  find  out 
whether  Matthew  wrote  it,  unless  I 
should  read  Professor  Foster's  works 
on  religion,  and  that  would  take  too 
long.  But  I  quote  it  because  through- 
out all  the  Western  world  this  has 
been  the  accepted  statement  of  the 
doctrine  of  non-resistance.  It  is,  per- 
haps, as  good  a  statement  of  that 
theory  as  one  can  find  in  a  few  short 
sentences.  Matthew  had  no  patent 
on  it,  of  course.  There  are  very  few 
thoughts  in  this  world  that  are  pat- 
ented, and  those  are  not  worth  it.  It 
was  undoubtedly  very  old  before 
Matthew  lived — if  he  lived.  And  it 
has  been  repeated  a  great  manv  times 
since  he  died — if  he  died. 

The  theory  of  non-resistance  is 
taken,  generally,  as  the  opposite  to 
the  theory  of  punishment,  or  the  the- 


DARROW'8  FIRST  SPEECH  13 

ory  of  vengeance,  which,  up  to  the 
time  of  the  Christian  religion,  was 
the  theory  of  the  world — and  since 
that  time  has  been  doubly  the  theory 
of  the  world.  Its  announcement,  as 
generally  admitted  by  those  who  have 
written  and  spoken  upon  the  subject, 
has  reference,  first,  to  the  treatment 
of  those  whom  society  calls  crimi- 
nals; next,  perhaps,  to  governments 
in  their  relations  to  each  other  and 
to  their  subjects;  and  then  to  women 
and  children,  insane,  prisoners,  and 
the  like.  It  relates  to  the  way  those 
who  have  the  power  have  generally 
exercised  that  power  in  relation  to 
the  rest  of  the  world. 

Now,  I  might  say  in  the  beginning 
that  I  am  not  quite  sure  of  this  the- 
ory, or  of  any  other  theory.  I  used 
to  be  a  good  deal  more  positive  than 
I  am  today.  And,  especially,  I  am 


14  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

not  at  all  sure  that  there  is  any 
theory  in  philosophy,  or  morals  (or 
laws),  that  works  out  in  sociology. 
The  science  of  society,  if  there  is 
such  a  science,  is  not  an  exact  science. 
You  cannot  demonstrate  any  theory 
of  society  the  way  you  can  demon- 
strate the  multiplication  table,  un- 
less it  is  Socialism — and  you  cannot 
demonstrate  that  in  the  same  way 
unless  you  are  speaking  to  an  audi- 
ence of  Socialists.  You  might  dem- 
onstrate Single  Tax  to  a  Single 
Taxer,  but  you  could  not  do  it  to 
anybody  else.  Exact  science  has  little 
to  do — something  to  do,  but  little  to 
do — with  the  ways  in  which  man  or- 
ganizes himself  on  the  planet.  He 
does  not  move  in  straight  lines,  or 
in  regular  curves,  or  even  in  crooked 
lines,  that  can  be  depended  upon. 
When  he  learns  what  the  crooked 


D ARROWS  ,  FIRST   SPEECH  15 

line  is  he  goes  straight.  And  no  the- 
ory of  life,  no  theory  of  society  can 
be  worked  out  as  to  communal  life, 
in  the  same  way  that  you  can  work 
out  the  science  of  mathematics,  or  of 
astronomy,  or  geology,  or  any  sci- 
ence dealing  with  anything  that 
keeps  still. 

But  the  question  is,  whether  the 
theory  of  punishment,  as  opposed  to 
the  theory  of  non-resistance,  is  most 
in  harmony  with  life,  and  tends  to 
the  progress  of  the  world;  whether 
human  life  in  its  slow  evolution  is 
going  toward  the  theory  of  non-re- 
sistance, or  is  going  toward  the  the- 
ory of  violence,  and  force,  and  pun- 
ishment. 

If  one  looks  back  at  the  origin  'of 
the  State  we  do  not  find  that  it  had 
the  immaculate  birth  that  most  peo- 
ple believe.  It  was  born  in  force  and 


16  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

violence.  The  strong  took  a  club, 
and  made  a  state  for  himself.  It 
was  a  simple  state,  kept  there  by  the 
force  of  the  strong  man's  club  and 
his  will.  From  that  it  has  gone  on 
until  it  takes  a  good  many  strong 
clubs,  together  with  a  good  many 
armies,  navies,  policemen,  lawyers, 
judges,  etc.,  to  keep  the  state  in  or- 
der. But  through  it  all  has  run  the 
theory  of  force,  and  through  it  all 
the  power  has  come  not  from  the 
people  who  asked  it,  but  from  the 
people  who  took  it  because  they  were 
the  stronger.  In  the  beginning  the 
chief  preserved  order  and  the  law, 
by  saying  what  should  be  the  law  and 
enforcing  order  himself  with  his 
club. 

In  modern  society  the  controlling 
forces  arrange  things  as  they  want 
them,  and  provide  that  certain  things 


17 

are  criminal.  Sometimes  those  things 
have  a  semblance  of  natural  crime, 
and  sometimes  not.  The  largest 
number  of  crimes  are  crimes  against 
property.  Sometimes  you  may  trace 
them  more  or  less  directly  to  viola- 
tion of  some  law  that  is  in  the  natural 
world.  But  the  fact  is  that  the  class 
which  rules  society  come  together 
and  say  what  men  must  do,  and  what 
they  must  not  do.  And  the  man  who 
violates  it  commits  crime. 

There  are  in  society,  and  always 
have  been,  a  large  number  of  people, 
due  mainly  to  conditions  of  society, 
who  are  what  we  call  defectives; 
who  are  anti-social  in  their  nature; 
whose  life  and  conduct  tend  toward 
the  disintegration  of  society,  instead 
of  the  life  of  society.  Very  largely 
the  treatment  of  crime  is  a  question 
of  treatment  of  these  anti-social  indi- 


18  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

viduals.  It  is  a  question  of  treatment 
of  those  who  persevere,  in  one  way 
or  another,  in  violating  the  rules  of 
the  game  which  society  has  made. 

Way  back  under  the  Mosaic  Law 
— and  Moses  did  not  have  a  patent 
on  it  either,  but  under  the  law  of  the 
world,  the  doctrine  of  an  "Eye  for  an 
eye,  a  tooth  for  a  tooth,"  prevailed. 
If  a  man  killed  another  his  life 
should  be  taken.  If  he  stole  some- 
thing he  should  be  punished.  If  he 
burglarized,  then  it  meant  something 
else,  generally  death.  If  he  did 
something,  the  world  would  do  some- 
thing to  him.  And  they  would  do 
that  something  that  the  world  at  that 
time  thought  was  the  right  thing  to 
do  to  him.  In  this  way,  even  down  to 
a  hundred  years  ago,  there  were  in 
England  about  two  hundred  crimes 
punishable  by  death.  Almost  every- 


DARROWJ8    FIRST   SPEECH  19 

thing  that  could  be  conceived  was 
punished  by  death.  And  the  law- 
yers, and  judges,  and  preachers  of 
that  day  had  no  thought  that  society 
could  hang  together  if  men  were  not 
hanged  regularly  for  stealing  sheep 
and  anything  that  happened.  The 
old  doctrine  of  an  eye  for  an  eye,  and 
a  tooth  for  a  tooth,  was  the  common 
doctrine  of  the  world,  and  that  doc- 
trine prevails  today. 

All  penal  codes  are  really  built 
upon  that  doctrine.  When  you  trace 
penal  codes  back  to  the  beginning, 
they  mean  one  thing,  and  only  one, 
i.  e.,  vengeance.  A  man  has  done 
something.  He  has  caused  some  one 
to  suffer.  Therefore  society  will  do 
something  to  him.  In  the  early 
stages,  if  some  one  slew  another,  the 
members  of  his  tribe  had  the  right  to 
go  and  take  the  life  of  any  member 


20  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

of  the  other  tribe  in  return.  It  did 
not  matter  whether  he  had  been 
guilty  or  not.  It  was  the  law  of  ven- 
geance, the  law  of  punishment — and 
punishment  and  vengeance  have  al- 
ways meant  the  same  thing  in  the 
world,  no  matter  where  it  has  been. 

Punishments  of  crimes  have  al- 
ways been  arbitrary.  One  man  would 
say  that  for  stealing  a  horse  the  some- 
body stealing  it  should  go  to  jail  for 
thirty  days.  Another  would  say  that 
he  should  go  to  the  penitentiary  for 
a  year;  another  would  say  five  years; 
and  somebody  else  would  say  he 
should  be  hanged  by  the  neck  until 
dead.  Punishments  have  never  de- 
pended upon  the  act  done,  but  upon 
the  man  who  saw  the  act  done  and 
the  mind  possessed  by  the  ruling 
power.  Of  half  a  dozen  judges  given 
authority  to  administer  punishment 


DARROW'S    FIRST    SPEECH  21 

for  a  certain  act  no  two  judges  would 
administer  the  same  kind  of  punish- 
ment. One  would  say"  thirty  days, 
another  thirty  years;  just  according 
to  the  mind  he  has.  Some  judge 
might  give  you  less  after  breakfast 
than  he  would  before.  And  another 
judge  might  give  you  more  if  he  had 
attended  a  banquet  through  the  small 
hours  in  the  morning  preceding,  and 
did  not  feel  well  when  he  adminis- 
tered the  sentence.  All  those  things 
enter  into  it,  and  when  you  come  to 
sum  it  all  up,  the  real  theory  of  it  is 
a  question  of  vengeance:  The  indi- 
vidual has  done  something.  How 
much  shall  we  do  to  him  in  return? 
How  much  will  we  make  him  suffer, 
because  he  has  made  some  one  else 
suffer? 

Now,  the  non-resistant  says,  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  crime,  i.  e.,  some 


22  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOT 

of  them  say  that.  And  they  say  that 
all  punishment  is  bad,  not  heavy 
punishment  alone — but  all  punish- 
ment; that  man  has  no  right  to  pun- 
ish his  fellow  man,  that  only  evil 
results  from  it;  that  the  theory  of 
vengeance  and  the  theory  of  punish- 
ment is  wrong;  that  it  cures  nobody, 
it  does  not  tend  to  benefit  society,  it 
does  not  tend  to  change  the  defec- 
tive, it  does  not  tend  to  build  up  soci- 
ety. It  is  wrong  and  untrue  in  its 
whole  theory;  and  the  theory  of  non- 
resistance  is  the  true  theory  as  to 
crime.  Whatever  you  may  think  of 
the  theory,  the  world  has  been  stead- 
ily going  that  way.  It  has  been  abol- 
ishing the  death  penalty,  until  today 
in  most  civilized  countries  there  are 
only  one  or  two  crimes  punishable 
by  death;  and  it  is  very  rarely  that 
death  is  meted  out  for  those. 


DARROW_'S    FIRST    SPEECH  23 

Punishment  has  been  growing  less 
severe,  and  the  methods  of  inflict- 
ing punishment  are  less  severe.  Of 
course,  in  the  old  day  when  men  were 
less  squeamish  and  more  honest  they 
had  their  hangings  in  broad  day- 
light. Today  we  do  not  do  it,  not 
because  we  are  better,  but  because 
we  are  squeamish.  We  have  hang- 
ings in  the  jail,  so  that  the  effects  of 
the  punishment  will  be  entirely  lost 
to  the  community. 

Ou*  terms  of  imprisonment  are  not 
so  lon^.  Our  methods  of  treating  the 
imprisoned  are  more  humane.  We 
sentence  a  man  to  prison.  Of  course, 
in  the  old  time  he  used  to  be  put  into 
a  vile  place,  where  he  would  be  half 
clad  and  half  fed,  and  where  he 
would  be  covered  with  rags  full  of 
vermin,  and  where  he  would  suffer 
all  sorts  of  physical  pain.  Today  we 


24  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

send  him  to  jail,  and  we  have  the  jail 
steam  heated  and  electric  lighted. 
We  have  a  doctor  to  take  care  of  him 
if  so,  perchance,  the  penalty  is  death 
he  won't  dies  before  his  time  comes ; 
and  if  he  is  to  be  hanged  he  gets  bet- 
ter food.than  he  ever  did  before.  So 
far  as  men  are  entrusted  with  the 
power  of  carrying  out  these  provi- 
sions they  do  it  as  humanely  as  they 
can  do  it. 

In  the  old  times  the  insane  were 
treated  like  criminals.  They  were 
locked  up  in  cells;  they  were  loaded 
with  chains;  they  WERE  criminals, 
because  the  rest  of  the  world  did  not 
understand  them.  We  have  gotten 
over  that.  We  have  learned  to  treat 
them  as  human  beings,  and  to  treat 
them  as  those  suffering  from  ailment, 
whereas  once  in  the  history  of  the 
world  they  were  visited  with  the  old 


DARROW'S    FIRST    SPEECH  25 

law  of  vengeance,  the  law  of  force. 
The  world  some  time  will  learn  to 
treat  all  of  its  defectives,  and  all 
those  who  violate  the  code,  the  same 
as  they  treat  the  insane  and  the  ill 
today.  And  we  are  learning  it,  more 
and  more,  every  day. 

The  theory  of  non-resistance  does 
not,  necessarily,  say  that  a  man  can- 
not be  restrained,  although  very 
likely  that  would  not  be  necessary 
under  any  decent  law  of  society.  It 
is  possible  there  are  some  who  are  so 
born,  and  have  been  so  treated  by 
society,  that  they  would  need  to  be 
restrained  just  as  those  afflicted  with 
small-pox  may  be  restrained  in  a 
hospital.  But  to  restrain  them  and 
treat  them  until  cured  is  one  thing; 
to  say  that  men  because  of  some  in- 
herent wickedness  deserve  punish- 
ment is  another  thing.  It  would  be 


26 

absurd  to  restrain  men  suffering  from 
small-pox  and  turn  them  out  from  a 
hospital  in  six  weeks,  whether  cured 
or  not.  If  hospitals  were  run  in  the 
same  way  as  jails,  we  would  send 
them  up  for  thirty  days ;  and  if  they 
got  well  in  a  week  we  would  keep 
them  there. 

The  whole  theory  of  punishment, 
so  far  as  there  is  any  theory  in  it — 
and  there  is  not  much  in  it,  except 
the  idea  of  vengeance — but  the  whole 
theory,  so  far  as  there  is  one,  comes 
from  the  religious  conception;  that 
some  people  are  made  inherently 
bad,  that  their  minds  are  evil,  or 
their  souls  for  that  matter,  or  what- 
ever is  the  intangible  thing  about 
them  that  makes  them  evil.  And 
they  deserve  punishment,  because 
they  have  a  "wicked,  abandoned  and 
malignant  heart."  We  always  have 


DARROW'S    FIRST    SPEECH  27 

to  put  that  "wicked,  abandoned  and 
malignant  heart"  in  the  indictment; 
otherwise  it  is  no  good.  If  he  has 
that  in  his  heart  he  can  be  punished. 
When  twelve  jurors  and  a  judge  get 
together,  how  can  they  tell  whether 
his  heart  is  bad  or  not?  You  could 
tell  better  if  you  dissect  him.  It  goes 
upon  the  theory  that  man  is  apart 
from  all  the  other  beings  that  inhabit 
the  universe;  that  he  is  a  free  moral 
agent;  that  he  is  a  sort  of  a  wild  train 
running  at  large  through  the  uni- 
verse; that  he  is  not  governed  by 
rules  and  conditions  like  the  rest  of 
the  universe  about  us.  But  that  the 
Lord  created  him,  put  a  mind  in  him, 
a  good  heart  in  some  of  them;  a 
wicked,  abandoned  and  malignant 
heart  in  others;  and  sent  them  out  to 
run  wild  independent  of  all  the  uni- 
verse about  them.  And  whenever 


28  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

the  good  people  catch  up  with  these 
wicked,  abandoned  and  malignant 
people  then  we  punish  the  wicked 
because,  intrinsically,  they  are  bad, 
because  they  chose  the  evil  instead  of 
the  good.  They  could  do  better  if 
they  wanted  to  be  better,  but  they  did 
not  choose.  Society  sends  them  to 
jail,  just  as  brutal  parents  whip  their 
children  because  they  are  bad  instead 
of  good. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  science  and 
evolution  teach  us  that  man  is  an  ani- 
mal, a  little  higher  than  the  other 
orders  of  animals;  that  he  is  gov- 
erned by  the  same  natural  laws  that 
govern  the  rest  of  the  universe ;  that 
he  is  governed  by  the  same  laws  that 
govern  animal  life,  aye,  and  plant 
life;  that  free  moral  agency  is  a 
myth,  a  delusion,  and  a  snare.  It 
teaches  us  that  he  is  surrounded  by 


DARROW8    FIRST   SPEECH  29 

environment,  the  product  of  all  the 
past,  the  product  of  all  the  present; 
that  he  is  here  just  like  any  other 
subject  of  natural  law;  and  that  it  is 
not  goodness,  it  is  not  badness,  that 
makes  him  what  he  is.  It  is  the  con- 
dition of  life  in  which  he  lives.  And 
if  he  lives  unwisely,  if  he  is  a  defec- 
tive, if  he  is  anti-social,  it  is  not  that 
he  chose  it;  but  it  is  due  to  a  thou- 
sand conditions  over  which  he  has 
not  the  slightest  control.  And  the 
wise  society  seeks  to  change  his  en- 
vironment, to  place  him  in  harmony 
with  life.  They  know  that  they  can 
only  change  the  man  by  changing  the 
conditions  under  which  he  lives ;  that 
good  and  evil,  so  far  as  he  is  con- 
cerned, do  not  exist;  that  right  and 
wrong  are  religious  myths;  that  it  is 
a  question  of  the  adaptability  of  the 
individual  to  social  life,  and  a  grad- 


30  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

ual  change  of  the  environment  under 
which  he  lives. 

With  the  state  is  the  same  thing. 
The  theory  of  force  and  violence  ap- 
plied to  the  state  has  drenched  the 
world  in  blood.  It  has  built  great 
navies,  and  great  armies.  One  nation 
builds  a  great  navy  and  a  great  army, 
and  destroys  the  resources  of  its  peo- 
ple to  build  armies  and  navies.  And 
another  nation  must  build  a  greater 
navy  and  a  greater  army,  because  of 
the  first.  It  makes  of  the  nations  of 
the  earth  armed  camps,  and  the 
stronger  the  one  arms  itself,  the 
stronger  must  the  rest.  England 
builds  her  wonderful  navy  out  of  the 
toil  of  the  poor,  out  of  what  should 
buy  food  for  the  men  who  produce 
it.  And  when  she  builds  it,  then 
Germany  must  build  one  as  large, 
and  so  must  France,  and  so  must 


DARROW8  FIRST  SPEECH      31 

Russia  build  one,  too.  And  of  course 
patriotic  America  must  build  one. 
We  need  a  navy  for  fear  that  a  band 
of  Senegambians  might  send  a  fleet 
to  devastate  Chicago  some  night. 
The  theory  of  force  and  violence  as 
applied  to  political  states  has  built 
up  the  navies  and  armies  of  the 
world,  and  has  caused  most  of  the 
bloodshed  of  the  human  race.  Is 
there  any  doubt  but  what  nations 
would  be  stronger  if  they  burned 
their  battleships  instead  of  building 
new  ones?  Can  you  increase  the 
power  of  one  nation  by  building 
ships,  when  you  simply  make  others 
build  larger?  You  never  change  the 
relative  proportion,  which  alone 
makes  the  strength.  If  instead  of 
adding  to  the  navies  the  world  over, 
we  gradually  got  rid  of  them,  the 


32  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

relative  strength  would  be  what  it 
was  before. 

In  industrial  life  it  is  the  same 
thing.  The  reign  of  force,  and  the 
reign  of  violence,  means  competi- 
tion, means  industrial  strife;  is  re- 
sponsible for  the  greed  and  selfish- 
ness and  avarice  for  the  fortunes  of 
the  great  and  the  poverty  of  the 
poor.  It  is  only  in  these  later  days, 
when  the  world  is  looking  to  some- 
thing better,  when  they  are  learning 
that  force  and  violence  is  wrong,  that 
it  is  wrong  that  merchants  compete 
and  cut  each  other's  throats  and 
workmen  compete  against  each  other 
to  show  how  much  less  they  can  work 
for;  and  that  it  is  better  to  organize 
society  on  a  co-operative  basis  where 
each  man  is  to  help  his  fellowman 
instead  of  fighting  his  fellowman. 


BARROW'S    FIRST    SPEECH  33 

The  dreams  of  the  world  may  be 
far  off,  and  we  must  fit  every  dream 
ito  every  reality.  For  the  world  is 
imperfect.  But  if,  as  society  pro- 
gresses, there  shall  one  day  be  a  civ- 
ilization better  than  the  world  has 
known,  it  will  be  a  society  where 
force  and  violence  and  bloodshed 
and  cruelty  have  disappeared.  It 
will  be  a  world  of  brotherhood.  A 
world  not  of  destruction,  of  compe- 
tion,  of  violence,  of  hatred,  of  en- 
mity; but  a  world  of  co-operation,  of 
mutual  help,  of  love,  of  brotherli- 
ness;  and  that  alone  makes  for  the 
progress  uf  the  world. 


LEWIS'  FIRST  SPEECH 


LEWIS'   FIRST   SPEECH  37 


LEWIS'  FIRST  SPEECH 

Mr.  Chairman,  Mr.  Darrow,  Ladies 

and  Gentlemen: 

You  will  hear  from  me  a  very  dif- 
ferent theory  of  non-resistance  to  the 
one  which  has  just  been  presented. 
If  I  believed  that  the  theory  of  non- 
resistance  had  been  properly  stated 
this  debate  would  close  at  this  point, 
because  I  have  heard  next  to  nothing 
from  the  lips  of  my  opponent  with 
which  I  am  not  thoroughly  in  har- 
mony. Mr.  Darrow  is  probably  the 
first  man  to  treat  this  subject  as  if  it 
were  a  department  of  modern  crim- 
inology, as  if  it  were  a  matter  of 
penal  codes,  a  question  of  the  pun- 
ishment of  criminals,  their  treatment 
in  general,  and  the  treatment  of  the 


38  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

sick,  the  insane,  etc.  These  are 
tacked  on  to  the  theory  by  my  oppo- 
nent, but  they  are  only  indirectly 
related  to  the  question.  In  all  that 
relates  to  the  question  of  punishment 
of  criminals  I  am  in  agreement  with 
Mr.  D arrow. 

The  subject  of  this  debate  is  the 
theory  expressed  in  the  words :  "Re- 
sist not  evil."  What  is  "evil"?  Does 
it  consist  chiefly  in  the  deeds  per- 
formed by  criminals,  as  my  opponent 
seems  to  think?  The  criminal,  ac- 
cording to  Mr.  Darrow,  is  not  re- 
sponsible for  what  he  does;  the  evil 
goes  further  back  than  the  criminal; 
it  does  not  consist  of  what  the  crim- 
inal does,  but  of  the  causes  which 
lead  the  criminal  to  do  as  he  does. 
What  are  those  causes?  Let  us  go 
back  to  the  causes  of  crime. 

It  will  be  agreed,  I  have  no  doubt, 


LEWIS'   FIRST   SPEECH  39 

by  my  opponent,  and  I  shall  maintain 
it  whether  he  agrees  or  not,  that  the 
criminal  is  the  product  of  society, 
that  is,  the  product  of  a  society 
which,  through  the  instrumentality 
of  private  property  in  the  means  of 
life,  shuts  out  some  men  from  the 
opportunity  to  live  honestly  and  de- 
cently. This  is  the  prolific  cause  of 
criminals.  Whatever  evil  there  may 
be  in  crime  must,  in  my  opinion,  be 
laid  not  to  the  criminal,  but  at  the 
door  of  society,  especially  at  the  door 
of  the  ruling  class,  the  existence  of 
which  is  responsible  for  the  criminal. 
And  the  question  of  "Resist  not  evil" 
in  this  field  is  not,  shall  society  resist 
the  actions  of  the  criminal  whom  it 
has  itself  produced,  but  shall  men 
who  have  been  shut  off  from  the 
meajis  of  life  resist  the  society  which 
has  so  shut  them  off?  Shall  they  re- 


40  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

sist  the  ruling  class  which  has  mo- 
nopolized their  means  of  life,  and 
left  them  face  to  face  with  starva- 
tion? Shall  that  ruling  class — the 
existence  of  which  is  the  real  evil  in 
the  problem — be  resisted  f  This  is 
the  question  of  resisting  evil  in  my 
use  of  the  terms.  And  I  say,  yes ;  we 
should  resist  this  evil  to  the  point  of 
its  abolition. 

I  am  going  to  give  you  another  ex- 
position of  the  origin  of  the  theory, 
or  doctrine, of  "Resist  not  evil."  This 
theory,  like  all  other  theories,  has 
what  the  philosophers  would  call  a 
sufficient  reason,  or,  as  the  scientists 
would  term  it,  an  efficient  cause. 
Sufficient  reason  and  efficient  cause 
are  back  of  all  things.  This  is  true 
of  all  theories,  without  regard  to 
whether  they  are  true  or  false.  In 
fact,  we  can  only  judge  the  merit  of 


LEWIS'    FIRST   SPEECH  41 

a  theory  when  we  know  its  cause. 
Theories  do  not  drop  out  of  the 
clouds.  They  are  not  communicated 
to  men  by  divine  persons  who  live 
outside  the  universe.  They  cannot 
be  accounted  for  on  the  ground  of 
spontaneous  generation.  Theories 
grow  out  of  the  world  of  material 
reality,  and  social  theories  grow  out 
of  social  phenomena. 

The  causes  for  the  theory,  put  for- 
ward by  Mr.  Darrow,  are  hazy  and 
indistinct  and  lack  historical  preci- 
sion. They  do  not  go  back  to  the 
origin  of  the  theory  itself.  This 
omission  on  the  part  of  my  opponent 
I  shall  proceed  to  remedy.  He  has 
given  us  the  names  of  the  men  who 
are  responsible  for  this  theory — 
Jesus  Christ  and  His  disciples,  etc. 
I  shall  endeavor  to  give  you  the 
forces  and  conditions  which  caused 


42  MARX    VER8U8    TOLSTOY 

the  theory  to  be  impressed  upon  the 
minds  of  the  men  who  taught  it. 

It  is  generally  supposed  that  prog- 
ress is  universal.  So  far  from  this 
being  the  case,  the  majority  of  the 
human  race  do  not  even  understand 
the  idea  of  progress.  If  it  is  ex- 
plained 'to  them  they  treat  it  with 
contempt.  This  is  the  mental  atti- 
tude of  all  the  people  of  the  Orient. 
And  this  attitude  the  Orientals  held 
in  common  with  the  ancients  and 
with  savages.  Herbert  Spencer,  in 
his  "Principles  of  Sociology,"  says: 

"Primitive  man  is  conservative  to  a  de- 
gree. Even  on  contrasting  the  higher  races 
with  one  another,  and  even  on  contrasting 
different  classes  in  the  same  society,  it  is 
observable  that  the  least  developed  are  the 
most  averse  to  change." 

Walter  Bagehot,  in  his  brilliant 


LEWIS'    FIRST    SPEECH  43 

little  book,  "Physics  and  Politics," 
maintains: 

"Our  habitual  instructors,  our  ordinary 
conversation,  our  inevitable  and  ineradicable 
prejudices,  tend  to  make  us  think  that  'prog- 
ress* is  the  normal  fact  in  human  society, 
the  fact  which  we  should  all  expect  to  see, 
the  fact  which  we  should  all  be  surprised 
if  we  did  not  see.  But  history  refutes  this. 
The  ancients  had  no  conception  of  prog- 
ress ;  they  did  not  even  so  much  as  reject 
the  idea,  they  did  not  even  entertain  the 
idea.  Oriental  nations  are  just  the  same 
now.  Since  history  began  they  have  always 
been  what  they  are." 

And  the  greatest  of  all  authorities 
on  this  question,  Sir  Henry  Sumner 
Maine,  says: 

"Vast  populations,  some  of  them  with  a 
civilization  considerable  but  peculiar,  detest 
that  which  in  the  language  of  the  West 
would  be  called  Reform.  The  entire  Mo- 


44  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

hammedan  world  detests  it.  The  multi- 
tudes of  colored  men  who  swarm  the  great 
continent  of  Africa  detest  it,  and  it  is  de- 
tested by  that  large  part  of  mankind  which 
we  are  accustomed  to  leave  on  one  side  as 
barbarous  and  savage.  The  millions  and 
millions  of  men  who  fill  the  Chinese  Em- 
pire loathe  it  (and  what  is  more)  despise 
it.  *  *  *  The  enormous  mass  of  the 
Indian  population  dreads  change.  *  *  * 
To  the  fact  that  enthusiasm  for  change  is 
comparatively  rare  must  be  added  the  fact 
that  it  is  extremely  modern.  It  is  known 
but  to  a  small  part  of  mankind,  and  to  that 
part  but  for  a  short  period  during  a  history 
of  incalculable  length." 

This  opposition  to  change,  which 
is  dominant  in  the  Oriental  world,  is 
responsible  for  the  stagnation  of  the 
East. 

Now,  this  stagnation  is  not  with- 
out a  cause,  and  the  cause  is  not  far 
to  seek.  We  have  only  to  read  their 
literature  and  to  examine  their  re- 


LEWIS'   FIRST   SPEECH  45 

ligions.  These  two  are  really  one — 
the  great  bulk  of  their  literature  is 
religious.  The  greatest  and  most 
widespread  of  these  religions  is  that 
of  Prince  Gautama  Buddha — Bud- 
dhism. Today  this  faith  rules  the 
minds  of  five  hundred  million  men, 
or  one-third  of  the  entire  human 
race.  It  has  enough  in  common  with 
all  the  other  Oriental  religions  to 
typify  them  all. 

The  first  and  most  fundamental  of 
the  truths  of  Buddhism  is  one  called 
the  "First  of  Four  Noble  Truths." 
Four  truths  make  up  the  system. 
That  first  truth  is,  that  "everything 
is  Misery."  The  ruling  principle  of 
the  universe  is  evil.  You  cannot  be 
protected  and  guarded  from  evil. 
It  is  inherent  in  all  things.  It  cannot 
be  escaped,  it  cannot  be  eradicated,  it 
cannot  be  changed.  It  is  the  absolute 


46  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

and  supreme  law  of  the  universe. 
This  is  the  first  great  dogma  of  the 
Buddhist  religion. 

The  logical  consequence  of  this 
belief  in  the  supremacy  of  evil  is  that 
the  word  "sorrow"  is  a  great  word  in 
the  Buddhist  faith.  In  fact,  the  faith 
itself  is  summed  up  in  the  word 


"sorrow." 


The  second  of  these  noble  truths 
is  "Sorrow's  Cause,"  or  the  "Cause 
of  Sorrow."  What  is  this  thing  that 
is  the  Cause  of  Sorrow?  In  the  esti- 
mation of  the  Orientals  it  is  the  thing 
modern  sociologists  call  "desire" — 
the  desire  to  escape  and  to  overcome 
oppression;  the  desire  to  conquer 
evil,  and  to  put  in  its  place  happiness 
and  joy.  The  desire  to  do  this  is  the 
one  damnable  thing  in  the  estimation 
of  the  Oriental.  He  believes  that 
evil  is  so  supreme  that  any  attempt 


LEWIS'   F1R8T   SPEECH  47 

to  resist  it  is  a  waste  of  energy,  and 
only  leads  to  greater  evils ;  therefore 
we  should  stamp  out  and  exterminate 
all  desire,  all  ambition,  all  enter- 
prise, all  hope  of  defeating  evil;  we 
should  crush  all  our  yearnings  and 
longings  and  wants  and  submit,  prac- 
tice resignation,  renunciation,  meek- 
ness and  submission,  bow  to  fate — 
"Resist  not  evil."  Evil  is  so  omni- 
potent that  resistance  is  madness.  Ex- 
istence is  so  ruled  by  evil  that  the 
only  salvation  lies  in  escaping  from 
life  back  into  the  peaceful  realm  of 
death.  Edwin  Arnold,  in  "The  Light 
of  Asia,"  expresses  it  thus: 

"The  aching  craze  to  live  ends,  and  life 

glides 
Lifeless,  to  Nameless  quiet,  Nameless 

peace : 
Blessed  Nirvana,  sinless,  stirless  rest — 

The  change  that  never  changes." 


48  MARX    VERSUS    TOL8TO? 

And  yet,  this  desire,  which  is  the 
thing  condemned  by  the  Orientals,  is 
regarded  by  Lester  F.  Ward,  and  all 
other  great  sociologists,  as  the  main- 
spring of  social  progress.  Without 
it  no  progress  is  possible.  But,  ac- 
cording to  the  religion  of  the  Orien- 
tals, there  is  no  triumph  of  religion 
until  every  possible  tendency,  every 
possible  impulse,  that  could  lead  to 
progress,  stimulating  human  ad- 
vancement and  the  march  of  mind  in 
the  conquest  of  matter,  has  been 
stamped  out,  until  progress  cannot 
be  possible  in  any  direction;  not 
until  then  have  we  reached  the  third 
truth:  "Sorrow's  Ceasing."  The  con- 
clusion is:  Life  is  not  worth  living; 
evil  is  triumphant;  we  must  submit 
while  we  are  here,  and  hope  to  get 
out  of  it  as  soon  as  possible. 

This  is  the  origin  of  the  doctrine 


LEWIS'   FIRST   SPEECH  49 

of  non-resistance  of  evil.  No  matter 
what  evil  may  attack  us  we  must  bow 
in  our  helplessness  and  say  with  the 
Mohammedan,  "It  is  Kismet" — it  is 
fate. 

The  Christian  religion,  of  which 
the  mythical  Matthew  is  an  alleged 
exponent,  is  an  Oriental  religion. 
Some  of  us  may  have  forgotten  that, 
but  it  is  none  the  less  true.  We  have 
corrupted  it  with  Western  ideas ;  that 
it  to  say,  we  have  improved  it  by 
injecting  some  civilization  into  it. 
But  it  is  none  the  less  Oriental  in  all 
its  leading  features.  Its  petrified 
sacred  books  are  just  as  much  op- 
posed to  change  as  are  all  sacred 
books  and  all  things  Oriental.  What 
horrible  hells  have  been  prepared 
and  threatened  to  those  who  ventured 
to  make  any  addition  to  the  knowl- 
edge contained  in  the  Scriptures. 


50  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

And  the  Hypatias,  Bacons,  Brunos 
and  Ferrers  who  have  dared  to  make 
any  addition,  and  who  have  sought 
by  the  process  of  education  to  make 
their  additions  common  property, 
have  always  found  their  Christian 
brothers  ready  to  anticipate  the  so- 
called  wishes  of  the  Almighty  and 
pay  them  installments  of  hell  in  ad- 
vance. 

The  theory  of  non-resistance  of 
evil  is  based  on  theological  religion. 
It  flies  in  the  face  of  all  modern  sci- 
ence. Back  of  it  stands  the  dogma 
that  the  Maker  of  All  Things  must 
be  all-wise.  If  evil  exists  in  the 
world  it  can  only  be  by  His  permis- 
sion. Not  a  sparrow  can  fall  to  the 
ground  without  His  knowledge;  not 
a  hair  on  a  human  head  be  hurt  with- 
out His  consent.  Therefore,  if  cities 
are  decimated  by  the  plague  it  can 


LEWIS'    FIRST    SPEECH  51 

only  be  because  He  is  willing  it 
should  be  so.  The  plague  is  evil. 
Nobody  disputes  that.  But  shall  it 
be  resisted?  Not  according  to  the 
doctrine  of  "Resist  not  evil,"  Ac- 
cording to  that  theory,  sanitation, 
drains,  whitewash,  and  chloride  of 
lime  are  inventions  of  the  devil.  The 
plague  cannot  be  there  unless  the 
powers  that  rule  the  universe  desire 
it.  Any  sanitation  is  an  attempt  to 
thwart  the  desire  of  these  powers. 
If  the  theory  of  non-resistance  had 
not  been  set  aside,  and  if  men  of  sci- 
ence had  not  set  themselves  to  resist 
the  evil  of  the  plague,  the  black 
plague,  like  the  white  plague,  would 
be  still  among  our  visitors.  Lightning 
which  struck  public  buildings  and 
laid  them  waste  could  not  do  so  un- 
less the  Maker  of  the  Universe  con- 
sented. Benjamin  Franklin,  who  at- 


52  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

tempted  to  resist  with  the  lightning 
rod,  was  regarded  as  one  of  the  ad- 
vance agents  of  his  Satanic  Majesty. 
The  evils  of  disease  and  pain,  sup- 
posed to  have  come  into  the  world  by 
the  will  of  God,  take  various  forms. 
Take  the  pain  of  women  in  child- 
birth, especially  in  extreme  cases. 
That  pain  is  evil.  Shall  we  resist  it? 
Or  shall  we,  because  it  is  a  creation 
of  the  Almighty,  allow  it  to  go  unre- 
sisted?  Some  men  said:  Resist! 
They  tried  anaesthetics  for  women  in 
child-birth.  And  the  theologians 
said  it  was  another  attempt  to  thwart 
the  Almighty,  and  under  no  circum- 
stances should  it  be  permitted  until 
Dr.  Arthur  Simpson  Young  pre- 
sented the  preachers  an  argument 
they  could  not  answer.  Dr.  Young 
said:  "You  forget  I  am  only  imitat- 
ing the  Almighty  Himself,  who  be- 


LEWIS'    FIRST    SPEECH  53 

fore  He  took  the  rib  from  Adam  put 
him  into  a  deep  sleep." 

The  essential  difference  between 
science  and  religion  gathers  around 
this  theory.  Science  believes  in  try- 
ing to  conquer  and  abolish  evil  of 
all  kinds.  This  is  the  supreme  aim 
of  science.  It  is  the  very  breath  of 
life  of  modern  civilization.  Reli- 
gion, theological  religion,  on  the 
contrary,  with  its  cringing  submis- 
sion to  evil,  meets  with  defeat  just 
in  proportion  as  science  advances 
and  knowledge  spreads.  All  through 
the  centuries  the  attitude  of  non- 
resistance  to  existing  evils  has  re- 
strained the  progress  of  the  race. 
Science  has  been  successful  in  the 
Occident;  it  has  conquered,  and  it  is 
pressing  Christian  theories  to  such 
an  extent  that  the  modern  Christian 
cannot  now  even  understand  or  com- 


54  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

prehend  his  own  doctrines.  Where 
is  the  Christian  who  can  see  any 
sense,  if  he  is  smitten  on  one  cheek, 
in  turning  the  other  to  his  assailant? 
Can  you  imagine  a  Christian  in  a 
restaurant  running  after  a  man  who 
has  taken  his  hat,  to  give  him  his 
coat? 

Oriental  ideas  have  become  obso- 
lete, the  doctrine  of  non-resistance 
along  with  them.  Only  here  and 
there  do  we  find  a  really  clever  man, 
like  Darrow,  ready  to  inflict  an  Ori- 
ental quietism  on  the  pulsing,  throb- 
bing life  of  the  modern  world. 

Christianity  is  largely  derived 
from  Buddhism.  The  Christianity 
of  the  New  Testament  just  as  surely 
took  its  doctrine  of  "Resist  not  evil" 
from  Buddhism  as  it  took  its  personal 
devil  from  the  superstition  of  Per- 
sia. This  theory  of  non-resistance 


LEWIS'    FIRST    SPEECH  55 

has  passed  from  Buddha  to  Christ, 
from  Christ  to  Tolstoy,  and  from 
Tolstoy  to  Darrow. 

Sometimes  a  theory,  born  in  one 
society  under  given  social  and  mate- 
rial conditions,  if  transplanted  to  an- 
other country  and  a  different  mate- 
rial environment,  will  die  out.  But 
if  there  happens  to  be  something  in 
that  environment  which  lends  color 
to  it,  it  may  live  on  indefinitely.  This 
is  why  the  non-resistance  theory  of 
Christ  reappears  in  the  writings  of 
Tolstoy.  All  Orientals  have  absolute 
monarchies.  The  monarch  is  all- 
powerful,  and  resistance  to  the  evils 
of  government  is  only  another  name 
for  sudden  death.  The  Jews  of  the 
time  of  Christ  were  so  ruled  by  the 
Roman  broadsword  that  resistance 
spelled  extermination.  And  Christ 
gave  the  people  the  best  advice  he 


56 

could  have  given  them  under  the  cir- 
cumstances when  he  tried  to  per- 
suade them  not  to  resist.  This  condi- 
tion is  repeated  in  Russia,  and  it  is 
chiefly  for  this  reason  that  the  theory 
reappears  in  Russia.  The  Russian 
autocracy  is  so  supreme  and  power- 
ful that  to  resist  it  is  only  a  way  to  a 
sudden  grave.  So  the  theory  of  non- 
resistance  keeps  alive  in  Russia,  be- 
cause it  happens  to  harmonize  with 
social  conditions  there. 

The  great  problem  of  America, 
and  of  Western  Europe  generally,  is 
the  problem  of  Capital  versus  Labor. 
We  take  our  side  with  labor.  Capital 
robs  labor;  and  that  robbery  is  evil. 
It  is  the  crowning  evil  of  the  mod- 
ern world.  Shall  we  resist  that  evil? 
I  say,  yes.  Darrow  says,  yes  and  no; 
practically,  yes;  theoretically,  no. 
The  truth  of  the  matter  is,  there  arc 


LEWIS'    FIRST    SPEECH  57 

two  Darrows:  A  Mr.  Hyde,  of  non- 
resistance;  and  a  Dr.  Jekyll,  full  of 
fight.  These  have  both  gone  into 
print.  Darrow,  the  Oriental  poet 
and  dreamer,  wrote  a  book,  entitled, 
"Resist  not  Evil."  Darrow,  the 
American  citissen,  ready  at  all  times 
to  help  the  laboring  class  resist  any 
and  all  forms  of  evil  that  the  ruling 
class  may  try  to  heap  upon  it,  wrote 
a  pamphlet:  "The  Open  Shop." 
The  motto  of  the  pamphlet  is :  "The 
cause  combatted  for  is  yours.  The 
efforts  and  sacrifices  made  to  win  it 
should  therefore  be  yours."  Darrow, 
the  Darrow  who  wrote  the  pamphlet, 
is  always  engaged  when  the  unions 
get  into  a  tight  corner.  Why  do  you 
suppose  they  engage  him?  Because 
he  is  a  non-resistant,  and  does  not  be- 
lieve in  resisting  evils?  No.  They 
engage  him,  because  they  know  that 


58  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

in  spite  of  his  acceptance  of  a 
dreamy,  poetic  theory  he  is  as  full  of 
fight  as  a  mountain  lion,  and  will  not 
give  up  until  every  weapon  has  been 
tried  and  the  last  possible  blow  is 
struck.  I  will  read  one  or  two  pas- 
sages from  "The  Open  Shop."  He 
says,  speaking  of  unionism,  that: 

"Individually  the  man  is  helpless,  the 
trade  union  has  furnished  the  common 
workman  the  one  institution  to  which  he 
can  look  for  friendship  and  protection;  the 
one  body  on  which  he  can  rely  for  the  re- 
dress of  his  grievances,  and  the  protection 
of  his  rights,  and  if  society  were  to  remove 
that  protection  and  safeguard,  and  cut  the 
workman  off  from  his  fellows  and  leave 
him  to  fight  his  individual  battles  against 
the  great  combination  of  capital  for  which 
he  works,  it  would  leave  the  laborer  stripped 
and  naked  to  commence  his  long  and  pain- 
ful journey  back  to  serfdom  once  again,  and 
when  he  starts  out  upon  this  road,  the  great 


LEWIS'    FIRST    SPEECH  59 

mass  of  men  whose  independence  has  been 
won  along  with  the  workman's  struggles, 
the  great  middle  class,  must  go  back  with 
him." 

If  you  resist  not  evil,  or  even  if 
the  unorganized  worker  resists  alone, 
that  means  back  to  serfdom.  This  is 
the  Darrow  of  the  twentieth  century. 
Again  he  says : 

"The  history  ©f  trade  unionism — as,  in 
fact,  the  history  of  the  rise  of  the  common 
people  toward  the  measure  of  independence 
they  now  enjoy — is  one  long  tale  of  strug- 
gles, defeats,  and  victories,  and  every  sin- 
gle step  in  their  progress  has  been  against 
the  most  stubborn  opposition  and  at  the 
greatest  cost." 

There  is  little  non-resistance  here. 
He  has  the  following  to  say  about 
the  "scab": 

"The  very  reason  that  keeps  men  from 


60  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

joining  the  unions  of  their  craft  makes  them 
more  servile  and  cringing  to  their  employ- 
ers ;  makes  them  ever  subservient  to  his  de- 
mands. They  have  learned  well  the  lesson 
of  the  masters  that  to  thrive  you  need  only 
work  hard  and  do  all  in  your  power  to  get 
the  good  opinion  of  your  boss.  So  this  class 
is  ever  ready  to  submit  to  encroachments; 
to  take  longer  hours;  to  consent  to  poorer 
conditions ;  to  make  no  trouble  over  unsafe 
tools,  and  to  even  let  their  wages  be  re- 
duced." 

According  to  this,  non-resistance 
leads  to  disaster.  These  are  the  views 
of  the  fighting  Darrow.  Darrow,  the 
non-resistant,  has  no  say  in  this 
pamphlet. 

In  this  debate  you  have  your 
choice  of  two  opposing  philosophies. 
Mr.  Darrow  offers  you  the  philos- 
ophy of  the  Orient;  the  philosophy 
of  non-resistance;  the  philosophy  of 
resignation,  renunciation,  helpless- 


LEWIS'    FIRST    SPEECH  61 

ness,  submission  and  despair — the 
philosophy  of  eternal  stagnation. 
This  philosophy  of  stagnation  is  the 
mental  reflection  of  the  stagnant  life 
of  Asia,  and,  in  its  turn,  it  acts  as  a 
preservative  of  the  stagnation  which 
gave  it  birth.  Japan  alone,  of  all  the 
Asiatic  nations,  has  broken  this  long 
trance  and  thrown  off  the  paralyzing 
stupor;  and  this  because  she  has  re- 
sponded to  the  example  of  those  en- 
ergetic, innovating,  evil-resisting 
Westerners,  who  are  still  regarded 
by  China  as  "foreign  devils." 

On  the  other  hand,  I  offer  you  the 
philosophy  of  the  Occident;  a  philos- 
ophy of  the  resistance  of  evil  in  all 
its  forms.  The  offer  is  somewhat  be- 
lated, as  you  have  already  accepted 
this  philosophy.  By  it  you  regulate 
your  daily  lives.  If  you  did  not,  civ- 
ilization would  drive  you  to  the  open 


62  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTi  Y 

sky  and  a  diet  of  roots  and  acorns. 
My  opponent  himself  has  accepted 
this  philosophy  of  progress  and  ac- 
tion with  all  that  part  of  his  brain 
which  enables  him  to  live  and 
breathe  and  maintain  his  being  in  the 
metropolis  of  the  Western  world. 
In  the  interior  of  his  skull  the  theory 

of  non-resistance  occupies  only  that 
isolated  corner  where  the  convolu- 
tions are  less  deep  and  more  rudi- 
mentary, the  corner  which  is  respon- 
sible for  some  of  his  literary  produc- 
tions. 

In  the  days  when  we  had  not  as 
yet  grasped  the  real  significance  of 
the  awakening  of  Japan  we  were 
greatly  alarmed  by  the  "Yellow 
Peril."  Our  alarm  had  its  basis  in 
the  fear  that  the  East  would  overrun 
the  West;  that  the  world  would  be 
conquered  by  a  race  which  would 


LEWIS'    FIRST   SPEECH  63 

offer  no  resistance  to  the  evils  of  op- 
pression and  exploitation,  a  race  that 
would  slave  from  sunrise  to  sunset 
for  a  handful  of  rice. 

In  vain  will  my  opponent  en- 
deavor to  shake  off  this  antithesis  of 
Occident  and  Orient.  You  cannot 
travel  backward  upon  the  path  that 
marks  the  genesis  of  his  theory  with- 
out discovering  its  Eastern  birth. 
Darrow  is  a  self-confessed  disciple 
of  Tolstoy.  Tolstoy's  country  is  on 
the  borders  of  Cathay.  Russia  finds 
herself  caught  between  white  and 
yellow;  and  her  perpetual  problem 
is :  Shall  she  stay  back  with  the  East 
or  go  forward  with  the  West.  Tol- 
stoy and  Darrow  are,  again,  both  dis- 
ciples of  an  Oriental  mystic,  himself 
a  mythical  character,  for  whom  the 
scenes  are  set  at  the  eastern  end  of  the 
Mediterranean,  northeast  of  Egypt, 


64  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

southeast  of  Turkey  —  further  east 
than  either.  The  teachings,  parables, 
miracles  and  legends  attributed  to 
him,  and  recorded  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, are  an  integral  part  of  the  in- 
tellectual baggage  of  the  dreamy, 
credulous  and  uncritical  East. 

America,  of  all  the  Western  coun- 
tries, is  the  farthest  removed  from 
the  soporific  influences  and  submit- 
to-evil  attitude  of  the  Oriental,  and 
rny  opponent  should  have  learned 
long  before  this  that  his  theory  of 
non-resistance  to  evil  has  no  present, 
nor  any  future,  in  this  country.  The 
English  poet,  Tennyson,  in  "Locks- 
ley  Hall,"  contrasts  these  two  posi- 
tions, and  like  a  true  Westerner  de- 
cides for  a  progressive,  evil-resisting 
civilization,  and  against  the  intellec- 
tual paralysis  of  Orientalism  and  sav- 


LEWIS'    FIRST    SPEECH  65 

agery.  He  begins  by  painting  Orien- 
tal life  in  glowing  colors  and  extol- 
ling its  apparent  advantages: 

*     *     *     "Ah,  for  some  retreat 
Deep  in  yonder  shining  Orient  where  my 
life  began  to  beat. 

"There,  methinks,  would  be  enjoyment  more 

than  in  this  march  of  mind, 
In  the   steamship,   in  the   railway,   in  the 

thoughts  that  shake  mankind. 

"There  the  passions,  cramp'd  no  longer, 
shall  have  scope  and  breathing  space, 

I  will  take  some  savage  woman,  she  shall 
rear  my  dusky  race. 

"Iron-jointed,    supple-sine\\ed,    they    shall 

dive,  and  they  shall  run, 
Catch  the  wild  goat  by  the  hair,  and  hurl 

their  lances  in  the  sun  ; 

"Whistle  back  the  parrot's  call,  and  leap  the 
rainbows  of  the  brooks, 

Not  with  blinded  eye-sight  poring  over  mis- 
erable books." 


66  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

Then  our  poet  shakes  himself  out 
of  his  day-dream  and  swings  back  to 
the  world  of  modern,  progressive, 
social  reality: 

"Fool,  again  the  dream,  the  fancy,  but  T 

KNOW  my  words  are  wild, 
But  I  count  the  gray  barbarian  lower  than 

the  Christian  child. 

"I,  to  herd  with  narrow  foreheads,  vacant 

of  our  glorious  gains, 
Like  a  beast  with  lower  pleasures,  like  a 

beast  with  lower  pains! 

"Mated  with  a  squalid  savage — what  to  me 

were  sun  and  clime? 
I,  the  heir  of  all  the  ages,  in  the  foremost 

files  of  time. 

"I,  that  rather  held  it  better  men  should 

perish  one  by  one, 
Than  that  the  earth  should  stand  at  gaze 

like  Joshua's  moon  in  Ajalon! 

"Not  in  vain  the  distance  beacons ;  forward, 
forward,  let  us  range. 


LEWIS'  FIRST  SPEECH  67 

Let  the  great  world  spin  forever  down  the 
ringing  grooves  of  change. 

"Men,  my  brothers ;  men,  the  workers,  ever 

reaping  something  new, 
That  which  they  have  done  but  earnest  of 

the  things  which  they  shall  do. 

"Through  the  shadow  of  the  globe  we  sweep 

into  a  younger  day: 

Better  fifty  years  of  Europe  than  a  cycle  of 
Cathay." 


DARROW'S  SECOND  SPEECH 


D ARROW 8   SECOND   SPEECH  71 


DARROW'S  SECOND  SPEECH 

As  near  as  I  can  find  out,  the  ques- 
tion with  my  opponent  seems  to  hinge 
on  a  pedigree.  I  have  seen  some 
mighty  poor  things  have  good  pedi- 
grees. I  never  looked  up  the  pedi- 
gree of  non-resistance,  and  I  do  not 
care.  It  may  have  come  from  Asia, 
or  from  Africa,  or  from  Europe.  I 
do  not  know  where  it  came  from.  I 
have  an  idea,  though,  that  almost 
every  prophet,  and  seer,  and  humani- 
tarian the  world  over  have  always 
had  a  glimmering  of  this  truth,  and 
have  taught  it  more  or  less  in  their 
philosophy,  though  they  may  not 
have  practiced  it.  For  it  is  one  thing 
to  believe  a  thing,  and  another  to 
work  at  it.  But  they  have  seen  this 


72  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

vision,  believed  it,  and  wanted  to 
help  it  along,  and  looked  forward  to 
the  time  when  it  shall  be  the  rule, 
I  have  no  doubt  whether  in  Europe 
or  in  Asia.  The  real  teachings  of  all 
the  great  men  in  the  world  have  not 
been  so  much  different,  because  after 
all  men's  thoughts  come  from  their 
own  conservativeness,  what  is  inside 
of  them — not  what  is  outside  of 
them.  Two  men  see  the  same  things, 
and  yet  they  think  different  thoughts. 
That  is  due  to  the  character  of  the 
mind.  Prophets  the  world  over  have 
had  rather  similar  thoughts,  the 
teachings  of  Buddha,  Confucius, 
Christ  and  the  really  great  teachers 
of  the  world  have  been  wonderfully 
alike,  and  where  the  doctrine  came 
from  has  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  it. 

My  friend  tells  you  in  one  breath 


DARROW'S    SECOND    SPEECH  73 

that  there  is  a  small  corner  in  my 
brain  where  I  believe  in  non-resist- 
ance— and  from  that  I  have  written 
this  book.  In  the  other  he  tells  you 
that  he  agrees  with  everything  I  have 
said.  Now,  if  he  agrees  with  all  I 
have  said  on  the  subject  of  non-re- 
sistance, and  all  its  inferences,  then 
all  there  is  left  is  a  question  of  defi- 
nition. I  do  not  care  anything  about 
his  definition,  nor  my  definition. 
And  yet  I  think  all  men  who  have 
claimed  to  believe  in  it  have  given  it 
the  same  definition.  I  have  never 
read  that  it  meant  that  one  could  not 
take  a  bath,  or  that  one  could  not 
cure  himself  of  a  disease,  or  could 
not  wear  clean  clothes.  That  has 
nothing  to  do  with  non-resistance. 

The  doctrine  of  non-resistance  is, 
as  a  doctrine,  opposed  to  force,  vio- 
lence, and  punishment;  and  is  a  doc- 


74  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

trine  which  teaches  that  the  law  of 
love  is  the  right  law  of  human  action 
rather  than  the  law  of  hatred,  ven- 
geance and  punishment.  You  may 
say  that  you  can  carry  this  theory 
into  plant  and  into  animal  life.  But 
all  this  is  largely  in  the  realm  of 
speculation.  A  man  believes  many 
things  as  to  society,  and  as  to  human 
life  that  he  cannot  demonstrate,  and 
that  he  can  only  see  as  visions  before 
him  of  what  he  thinks  a  regenerated 
race  will  do,  or  some  time  become. 
You  cannot  apply  it  to  all  animal 
life,  to  all  plant  life,  and  to  all  hu- 
man life,  and  say  that  if  one  individ- 
ual should  drop  down  into  a  society 
filled  with  strife  and  discord  and 
combat  he  can  live  an  ideal  life  and 
be  governed  by  the  rules  which  will 
one  day  govern  the  world.  This  fact 
in  no  way  shows  that  this  is  the  true 


BARROWS    SECOND    SPEECH  75 

rule  of  life,  and  in  no  way  shows  that 
the  theory  is  the  wrong  theory. 

Society  today,  as  ever,  is  a  mixture 
of  the  life  of  individual  men.  It  is 
a  mixture  of  the  good  and  the  bad, 
broadly  speaking.  It  is  a  mixture  of 
co-operation  and  competition;  it  is 
a  mixture  of  hatred  and  fear;  it  is  a 
mixture  of  war  and  peace.  The 
world  has  evolved  from  the  lowest 
order.  It  is  still  evolving.  Is  there 
any  doubt  with  anybody  who  believes 
in  evolution  that  as  the  human  race 
evolves  it  will  leave  war,  murder  and 
bloodshed  out;  and  that  it  will  cling 
to  co-operation,  peace,  and  harmony, 
and  love?  If  it  does  not  do  this,  it 
will  not  evolve.  That  is  what  evolu- 
tion means.  Neither  man  individ- 
ually, nor  man  mixed  up  in  society, 
is  able  to  demonstrate  or  exemplify 
this.  All  he  can  do  is  to  go  toward 


78  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

it,  and  be  as  sure  as  possible  that  he 
is  on  the  right  road,  and  that  so  far 
as  in  him  lies  he  is  helping  the  world 
to  go  the  right  road. 

Maybe  there  are  inconsistencies  in 
this  philosophy.  It  may  be  there  are 
inconsistencies  in  those  who  preach 
it  and  talk  it.  Perhaps  you  can  take 
some  of  my  writings  and  find  some 
that  are  inconsistent.  I  have  talked 
too  much  to  make  it  all  consistent. 
But  if  you  can  find  some  inconsistent 
thing  that  I  said  you  would  have  no 
more  right  to  say  that  makes  the  the- 
ory wrong  than  to  say  Benjamin 
Franklin  was  a  lunatic  because  he 
thought  that  he  could  keep  off  light- 
ning with  a  lightning  rod.  That  was 
a  part  of  the  witchcraft  of  science. 

The  theory  is  scarcely  disputed  by 
my  friend — the  theory,  in  all  that  it 
implies,  is  scarcely  disputed.  The 


DARROW'S   SECOND   SPEECH  77 

theory  has  been  promulgated  as 
against  the  cruelty  of  society,  as 
against  the  doctrine  of  "an  eye  for  an 
eye,  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth,"  which 
is  prevalent. 

He  tells  you  this  is  the  Christian 
doctrine  that  I  am  teaching.  I  wish 
it  was.  That  is,  I  wish  the  Christian 
doctrine  was  this  doctrine.  Did  you 
ever  hear  a  preacher  who  preached 
it?  Did  you  ever  hear  of  an  ortho- 
dox preacher  who  would  not  let  go 
of  the  church  before  the  jail?  Would 
they  give  up  punishment?  Would 
they  give  up  force?  Don't  they  love 
the  penitentiary  more  than  the 
chapel?  Did  you  ever  know  of  one 
praying  that  a  man  should  not  be 
punished;  or  forgiving  him  his 
faults,  or  not  criticising  him  for  what 
they  considered  his  errors?  It  is  not 
the  doctrine  of  the  Christian  church 


78  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

at  all.  It  is  the  opposite.  But  if  it 
is  not  the  doctrine  of  the  Christian 
church,  neither  is  it  the  doctrine  of 
China  or  Japan,  except  of  a  few  of 
the  wise,  and  great,  and  good,  who 
there,  as  everywhere,  saw  what  the 
rulers  of  the  world  have  never  seen, 
who  felt  what  the  cruel  have  never 
felt,  whose  minds  had  the  imagina- 
tion to  feel  the  sufferings  of  their 
fellow  men,  whose  hearts  were  so 
tender  as  to  make  them  feel  the  heart 
throbs  of  the  weak  and  poor  and  the 
suffering.  But  China,  Japan,  India, 
and  the  whole  world  have  been  ruled 
by  hatred.  They  cut  men's  heads  off 
in  China.  They  send  men  to  prison 
as  punishment.  The  great  religious 
teachers  may  have  believed  one 
thing,  but  their  religious  rulers  have 
ever  practiced  another  thing.  Force 
is  the  essence  of  government.  Every 


DARROW'S   SECOND   SPEECH  79 

government  upon  the  face  of  the 
earth  has  been  over  the  protest  of  the 
weak  and  of  the  poor. 

Almost  all  men  in  jail  believe  in 
non-resistance.  In  a  way  they  are, 
generally,  not  wise  and  great.  They 
have  not  had  the  time  and  the  money 
to  be  wise  and  great.  But  all  of  them 
have  an  instinctive  feeling  as  they 
look  back  at  their  lives  that  they  have 
had  to  do  just  as  they  have  done. 
They  might  look  at  the  acts  that 
placed  them  where  they  are,  and  into 
every  one  of  the  devious  places  that 
they  have  trod  down  from  their  cra- 
dles to  the  present,  and  they  can  see 
thousands  of  circumstances  which 
held  them  in  the  grasp  and  made 
them  what  they  are.  And  they  know 
they  are  not  to  blame  for  their  posi- 
tion. They  know  in  their  hearts  that 
the  whole  theory  of  punishment  is 


80  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

wrong,  the  whole  theory,  though  it  is 
the  theory  upon  which  the  world 
goes  today. 

If  Brother  Lewis  has  been  con- 
verted to  the  theory  of  non-resist- 
ance, in  the  penal  code,  I  wish  he 
would  go  to  work  and  convert  the 
rest  of  the  world,  for  it  needs  it. 
There  are  only  a  few  who  have  been 
converted  to  it.  All  the  governments 
have  been  built  upon  it. 

What  is  true  of  jails  and  peniten- 
tiaries is  true  of  the  state.  Men  have 
practiced  force.  They  seem  to  for- 
get that  in  the  thousand  activities  of 
human  life  we  go  about  our  affairs 
automatically;  that  men  turn  to  the 
right  when  they  meet  on  the  street, 
and  that  they  go  around  each  other 
the  proper  way.  They  live  together 
automatically  in  most  of  the  affairs 
of  life.  But  they  still  seem  to  thifik 


D ARROW 8   SECOND    SPEECH  81 

that  the  great  weight  of  the  club,  and 
the  great  power  of  the  jail  and 
prison,  must  be  used  or  the  state  must 
fall  to  pieces.  And  so  we  build  our 
armies  and  our  navies,  and  make  our 
penal  statutes,  and  our  cruel  punish- 
ments, and  the  whole  world  believes 
in  them — and  the  whole  world  prac- 
tices them. 

I  believe  with  my  friend  that  the 
great  problem  today  is  the  problem 
of  capital  and  labor.  But  how  is  that 
affected  by  the  theory  of  non-resist- 
ance? 

Those  who  think  that  non-resist- 
ance is  a  milk-and-water  theory  have 
got  another  guess.  It  is  not.  I  was 
talking  the  other  day  with  a  man 
who  had  been  a  colonel  in  the  war. 
I  said:  "I  do  not  know  how  you 
could  get  up  courage  to  go  up  in  the 
face  of  cannons  and  bayonets  and 


82  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

take  your  life  in  your  hands."  He 
says:  "1  did  it,  because  I  was  too 
big  a  coward  to  run  away."  And 
that  is  why  most  all  men  go  to  war. 
They  are  too  big  cowards  to  stay  at 
home.  That  is  why  men  fight.  They 
are  too  big  cowards  not  to  fight.  Do 
you  think  it  is  a  brave  man  who 
fights;  or  is  it  the  brave  man  who 
does  not  fight?  I  will  show  you  ten 
thousand  men  who  are  willing  to  go 
up  in  the  face  of  hostile  cannon, 
where  you  cannot  find  one  man  who 
will  take  one  stick  of  criticism  in  a 
daily  newspaper.  There  is  not  any- 
thing on  earth  so  cheap  as  physical 
courage.  Why  even  a  bulldog  can 
fight,  but  it  has  not  got  much  brain. 
Fighting  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
labor  question,  or  with  the  question 
of  capital  and  labor.  How  is  it  ap- 


DARROW'S    SECOND   SPEECH  83 

plied    to    the    question    as    it   exists 
today? 

In  order  to  change  social  condi- 
tions you  say  you  must  get  rid  of  the 
ruling  class,  by  force  or  some  other 
way — one  way  or  the  other.  Now, 
the  weak  are  the  poorest  ones  in  the 
world  to  fight.  They  have  no  guns ; 
the  other  fellow  has  them  all.  They 
have  no  organization.  They  have  no 
chance  in  a  fight.  But  they  can  fight. 
Workingmen  of  today  can  fight.  If 
all  of  them  would  refuse  to  work  or 
the  great  majority  would  refuse  to 
work  and  enter  into  passive  resist- 
ance— non-resistance — quit  feeding 
the  race;  that  is  all  you  need  to  do. 
You  cannot,  of  course.  Wait  until 
you  can.  You  can  get  a  small  mi- 
nority to  arm  themselves  with  brick- 
bats and  guns.  What  happens?  You 


84  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

are  sending  a  small  force,  poorly 
armed  and  equipped,  against  all  the 
power  of  the  state,  and  you  cannot 
succeed,  and  you  never  have  suc- 
ceeded. 

The  only  force  that  can  win  is  de- 
termination, non-resistance,  peace- 
able force.  There  is  such  a  thing  as 
peaceable  force  that  is  more  forcible 
than  forcible  force. 

Let  me  give  you  a  few  illustra- 
tions. What  makes  life?  The  cold, 
hard,  stern  winter;  or  the  sunshine 
and  the  warm  rain  of  the  summer 
and  the  spring?  The  one  means 
death,  and  the  other  means  life.  Re- 
pression and  death  go  together.  Love 
and  sunshine  and  life  are  born  to- 
gether. Do  you  want  to  change  the 
conduct  of  men,  whether  grown  indi- 
viduals or  children;  take  a  child  and 
whip  the  child,  can  you  change  his 


D ARROW'S    SECOND    SPEECH  85 

conduct?  You  may  change  his  con- 
duct, but  can  you  change  his  heart? 
Conduct  is  only  the  outward  mani- 
festation of  the  inward  individual. 
To  change  the  individual  you  must 
change  the  heart,  and  then  the  con- 
duct must  be  free.  Can  you  cure 
hatred  with  hatred?  Everybody 
knows  it  in  their  own  life.  You  may 
force  men  against  their  will  to  do 
certain  things,  but  their  hearts  are  a 
seething  mass  waiting  for  a  time 
when  they  may  accomplish  other 
things  by  violence.  Do  you  think 
you  can  do  something  for  a  man  by 
sending  him  to  the  penitentiary? 
Gentleness  is  the  law  that  makes  life. 
Cruelty  and  hatred  and  coldness  is 
the  law  that  makes  death.  The  ques- 
tion of  non-resistance  or  resistance 
means  a  choice  between  those  two 
laws. 


LEWIS'  SECOND  SPEECH 


LEWIS'  SECOND  SPEECH      89 


LEWIS'  SECOND  SPEECH 

Mr.  Chairman,  Mr.  Darrow,  Ladies 

and  Gentlemen: 

I  wish  it  to  be  clearly  understood 
that  so  far  I  have  said  nothing  in- 
tended to  express  any  agreement  with 
Mr.  Darrow  as  to  the  merits  of  the 
theory  of  non-resistance;  but  I  reas- 
sert that  I  have  no  fundamental  dis- 
pute with  my  opponent  on  the  sub- 
ject of  criminology. 

The  scientific  method  of  treating 
anything  or  any  theory  is  the  histor- 
ical method.  Many  things  which 
remained  mysteries  for  centuries  be- 
came amazingly  simple  once  their 
origin  became  known.  The  question 
of  origin  is  now  generally  regarded 
as  the  first  and  most  important  ques- 


90  MARX    VERSUS    TOL8TOT 

tion  in  the  treatment  of  any  scientific 
subject.  And  my  friend  Darrow 
proposes  to  sweep  it  away  by  a  jibe 
about  pedigrees.  Scientific  students 
will  form  their  own  estimate  of  his 
astonishing  assertion  that:  "where 
the  doctrine  came  from  has  nothing 
to  do  with  it." 

Mr.  Darrow  evidently  believes 
that  nobody  ever  supposed  that 
Christianity,  with  its  theory  of  non- 
resistance,  meant  the  non-resistance 
of  that  form  of  evil  called  disease. 
The  modern  Christian  will  agree 
Darrow.  He  is  a  believer  in  baths 
and  sanitation;  but  it  was  not  always 
so.  The  founders  of  his  religion  re- 
garded disease  as  due  to  the  posses- 
sion of  devils  as  the  New  Testament 
amply  shows.  With  them  medical 
science  counted  for  nothing  and  was 
discouraged.  Their  only  cure  for 


LEWIS'  SECOND  SPEECH       91 

disease  was  an  appeal  to  a  being  who 
had  power  to  compel  the  devils  to 
vacate  human  and  other  bodies. 
Medical  science  has  only  reached 
even  its  present  unsatisfactory  posi- 
tion in  the  teeth  of  theological  oppo- 
sition and  the  modern  Christian  has 
only  accepted  scientific  theories  of 
disease  because  they  have  been  thrust 
upon  him  b}^  the  progress  of  knowl- 
edge— a  progress  that  was  bitterly 
fought  by  his  historic  church.  Reli- 
gious opposition  to  cleanliness  and 
sanitation  furnishes  an  instructive 
chapter  in  history — a  chapter  which 
my  opponent  has  evidently  left  un- 
read. 

One  of  the  chief  arguments  in  Mr. 
Darrow's  last  speech,  as  in  his  first, 
is  his  assumption  that  the  theory  of 
non-resistance  is  a  modern  product — 
a  crown  and  flower  of  recent  thought. 


92  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

The  exact  opposite  is  the  truth.  This 
theory  belongs  essentially  to  the  an- 
cient and  primitive  world.  It  has 
wide  acceptance  where  evolution  is 
unknown.  It  is  as  widely  rejected  in 
the  modern  Western  world  where 
the  theory  of  evolution  is  solidly  es- 
tablished. 

Force,  in  the  estimation  of  my 
opponent  is  always  bad,  and  here  I 
think  he  is  wide  of  the  truth.  I  will 
freely  concede,  and,  if  need  be,  main- 
tain that  the  force  used  by  a  ruling 
class  to  oppress  and  rob  a  subject 
class,  is  evil.  Such  oppression  and 
exploitation  is  very  properly  de- 
scribed as  evil.  This  may  be  well 
described  as  aggression,  and  this 
class  aggression  is  not  a  supposition ; 
it  is  the  central  fact  of  present  civil- 
ization. The  question  is:  Should 
this  evil  be  resisted?  I  say,  yes.  Such 


LEWIS'   SECOND  SPEECH  93 

resistance  is  the  life-breath  of  human 
progress,  and  non-resistance,  as  I 
have  already  shown  by  my  oppo- 
nent's own  pamphlet,  would  lead  us 
back  to  the  dark  ages.  I  am,  as  a 
Socialist,  unalterably  opposed  to  the 
aggression  of  a  class,  and  a  whole- 
hearted believer  in  resistance  to  that 
aggression.  If  a  despotic  nation 
seeks  to  tyrannize  over  a  neighboring 
people  because  the  neighbor  is  giv- 
ing dangerous  examples  of  the  ad- 
vantages of  free  institutions,  while  I 
would  condemn  the  force  so  em- 
ployed, I  would  applaud  the  force 
used  by  said  neighbor  if  it  should 
resist  the  tyranny.  I  am  a  believer 
in  non-aggression,  but  opposed  to  the 
non-resistance  of  aggression.  There 
is  an  important  difference  between 
non-aggression  and  non-resistance — 
a  difference,  however,  which  has 


94  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

played  no  part  in  the  thinking  of  my 
opponent. 

One  of  the  points  in  my  opponent's 
position  seems  to  him  to  defy  any 
contradiction.  This  is  that  whatever 
may  be  the  practical  shortcomings 
of  his  theory  as  remedy  for  present 
evils,  at  least  it  is  ideally  correct  and 
will  be  the  governing  principle  in  the 
more  enlightened  society  of  the  fu- 
ture. 1  regret  being  obliged  to  dis- 
appoint any  expectations  he  may 
have  of  my  acquiescence  in  this  prop- 
osition. It  is  highly  probable  that 
society  will  not  for  some  time  rid 
itself  of  all  forms  of  evil  and  of 
course  the  statement  of  the  theory  of 
non-resistance  of  evil  implies  exist- 
ence of  evil  which  is,  or  is  not,  to  be 
resisted.  I  cannot  conceive  of  a  so- 
ciety in  the  future  adopting  as  a 
working  principle  so  suicidal  a 


LEWIS'  SECOND  SPEECH       95 

theory  as  the  non-resistance  of  evil. 
Any  society  persisting  in  such  a  pol- 
icy would  eventually  disappear  in 
the  struggle  for  existence.  Unceas- 
ing resistance  to  evil  in  all  its  forms 
is  the  first  condition  of  human  prog- 
ress. 

A  long  and  profound  acquaintance 
with  the  practice  of  law  has  taught 
my  opponent  certain  rather  clever 
methods  of  getting  out  of  tight 
places.  And  so  we  are  calmly  in- 
formed that  there  is  a  kind  of  force 
that  is  not  forcible,  and  certain  forms 
of  resistance  that  do  not  resist.  Pas- 
sive resistance,  for  example,  is  not 
resistance  at  all,  despite  its  being 
called  such.  It  seems  to  my  non-legal 
intellect  that  force  which  is  not 
forcible  cannot  properly  be  called 
force,  and  the  quality  of  resisting 
must  be  present  in  all  forms  of  resist- 


ance  whether  it  be  called  active  or 
passive.  Contradictions  of  terms 
may  serve  as  argument  in  the  courts 
but  not  in  this  debate. 

It  is  a  very  excellent  command- 
ment which  says:  "Thou  shalt  not 
steal."  Stealing  is  a  form  of  ag- 
gression, especially  when  it  is  prac- 
ticed by  the  strong  against  the  weak; 
and  the  great  bulk  of  real  stealing  is 
of  this  order.  Darrow  will  admit 
that  the  stealing  by  the  ruling  class 
of  the  wealth  produced  by  the  work- 
ing class  is  real  stealing,  and  he  is 
no  doubt  as  willing  as  I  am  to  say 
to  that  ruling  class:  "Thou  shalt  not 
steal."  But  suppose  they  ignore  the 
injunction.  What  shall  we  do? 
Shall  we  allow  their  stealing  to  go 
unresisted?  Our  only  course,  it 
seems  to  me,  is  to  fall  back  on  the 
principle  enunciated  by  Carlyle: 


LEWIS'  SECOND  SPEECH  97 

There  are  two  guilty  parties  in  any 
theft,  the  thief  and  the  victim.  If 
the  robber  pays  no  heed  to  our 
protest  we  must  turn  to  the  robbed 
worker  and  say:  Thou  shalt  not  be 
stolen  from.  People  who  allow 
themselves  to  be  robbed  when  they 
could  prevent  it  by  resisting,  have 
small  claims  to  sympathy. 

One  of  the  aspects  of  non-resist- 
ance which  damns  the  theory  in  my 
estimation  is  that  it  is  so  thoroughly 
in  harmony  with  the  desires  of  the 
ruling  class.  I  cannot  conceive  that 
tyrants  of  any  kind  could  wish  any- 
thing better  than  that  the  evil  of 
their  oppression  should  go  unresist- 
ed.  It  hardly  seems  probable  that 
the  existing  possessing  class  will  give 
up  without  a  bitter  struggle  and  a 
non-resistant  working  class  would  be 
doomed  to  perpetual  slavery. 


98  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

Mr.  Darrow  seems  to  regard  the 
state  as  having  existed  almost  from 
all  eternity.  He  regards  it  as  a  prod- 
uct of  savagery.  In  this  he  is  alto- 
gether mistaken.  If  the  anthropol- 
ogists are  to  be  believed,  the  state  is 
onlv  about  five  thousand  years  old, 
while  primitive  communism,  which 
had  no  state,  endured  for  approxi- 
mately one  hundred  thousand  years. 

The  state  dates  from  the  break-up 
of  communal  property  and  the  be- 
ginning of  private  property  in  land. 
The  principle  of  private  property 
was  extended  to  all  means  and  modes 
of  production  as  they  developed  and 
the  state  grew  in  power  and  impor- 
tance as  a  consequence.  Back  of  the 
state  stands  private  property  in  the 
means  of  life.  Capitalist  property 
is  the  root  from  which  the  army,  navy 
and  police  systems  come  forth.  The 


LEWIS'  SECOND  SPEECH  99 

state  is  a  citadel  built  around  capital- 
ist property.  The  state  is  the  grand 
weapon  wielded  against  the  workers 
whenever  they  grow  restless  under 
their  heavy  burdens. 

Resistance  to  capitalist  exploita- 
tion must  begin  at  the  state.  The 
state,  as  a  class  instrument,  must  be 
wrested  from  the  hands  of  its  users, 
not  to  be  used  by  its  new  owners  to 
oppress  others,  but  in  order  that  it 
may  be  abolished.  The  abolition  of 
the  state  is  the  historic  task  of  the 
working  class.  This  task  can  never 
be  achieved  by  quiescence  and  non- 
resistance.  It  can  only  come  as  the 
result  of  long,  hard  struggle.  This 
sense  of  the  necessity  for  resistance 
is  already  part  of  the  worker's  men- 
tal processes.  He  cannot  compre- 
hend the  meaning  of  non-resistance. 
The  thing  looks  futile  on  the  face  of 


100  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOT 

it.  He  must  fight  back  at  all  costs. 
The  unions  are  founded  on  this  idea. 
The  future  of  the  working  class  de- 
pends upon  its  ability  to  successfully 
resist  oppression.  Liberty  and  strug- 
gle are  inseparably  linked  together. 
A  struggling,  evil-resisting  working 
class  is  indispensable  to  future  prog- 
ress of  the  human  race. 


DARROW'S  THIRD  SPEECH 


BARROW'S  THIRD  SPEECH  103 


DARROW'S  THIRD  SPEECH 

I  am  not  in  the  least  interested  in 
winning.  It  will  make  no  difference 
to  me  who  has  the  last  speech,  or 
who  wins. 

Now,  it  is  very  evident  that  my 
friend's  definition  of  non-resistance 
and  mine  are  not  the  same.  Perhaps 
this  will  prevent  this  audience  from 
getting  its  money's  worth.  I  do  not 
know.  But  if  you  get  any  ideas  it 
does  not  make  any  difference. 

I  do  not  understand  non-resistance 
to  mean  that  you  cannot  fight  disease, 
or  destroy  bedbugs,  or  take  baths,  or 
indulge  in  passive  resistance.  I  do 
not  think  that  anybody  who  has  ever 
preached  or  taught  non-resistance 
understood  such  a  thing.  Now,  if 


104  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

non-resistance  does  include  it,  then  I 
do  not  fully  believe  in  non-resistance. 
I  do  not  propose  to  run  a  theory 
down  a  blind  alley  just  to  hang  on  to 
something. 

I  think  a  man  is  not  obliged  to 
keep  on  working  in  order  to  practice 
non-resistance.  He  can  sit  down  and 
rest  if  he  wants  to.  And  if  all  work- 
ingmen  chose  to  sit  down  and  rest, 
instead  of  working  to  satisfy  the 
needs  of  the  race,  I  would  consider 
that  was  passive  resistance,  non-re- 
sistance. I  am  not  in  the  least  re- 
quired to  work. 

Neither  will  I  admit  that  non- 
resistance  is  a  religious  doctrine,  ex- 
cept as  the  word  "religion"  might 
mean  something  it  has  never  meant 
in  practice.  It  might  mean  an  aspi- 
ration for  a  higher  form  of  collective 
life,  which  it  has  never  meant.  It 


D ARROW'S  THIRD  SPEECH  105 

has  always  meant,  a  scheme  for  sav- 
ing man's  soul.  But  in  that  sense 
non-resistance  has  had  nothing  to  do 
with  it.  Certainly  these  monks  were 
not  non-resistants.  Because  when  the 
world  was  covered  with  the  Dark 
Ages  of  religious  belief  and  lack  of 
intelligence,  we  had  plenty  of 
wars  and  plenty  of  Christianity. 
And  the  greatest  wars  the  world  has 
known  have  been  fought  on  account 
of  religious  beliefs.  Upon  one  side 
were  the  non-resistant  Christians, 
and  upon  the  other  were  the  Moham- 
medans and  other  religious  sects.  It 
has  never  been  any  substantial  part 
of  the  Christian  religion.  Now,  of 
course,  here  and  there  great  souls 
have  been  illumined  with  this 
thought  and  have  taught  it.  But  a 
religion  is  one  thing,  and  a  religious 
machine  is  quite  another  thing.  And 


106  MARX    VXM3V6    TOL8T07 

the  religious  machine  has  not  only 
believed  in  resistance  in  this  world 
but  in  the  other,  too;  neither  of 
which  I  believe  in. 

Whether  non-resistance  leads  to 
pessimism  does  not  interest  me  in  the 
least.  At  least  it  is  an  open  ques- 
tion. I  believe  the  world  is  divided 
into  two  classes:  the  pessimists  and 
the  weak-minded.  I  am  inclined  to 
the  pessimist  side.  But  what  that  has 
to  do  with  non-resistance  I  do  not 
know. 

My  friend  says  he  believes  in  non- 
aggression,  but  not  in  non-resistance. 
My  friend  is  not  a  lawyer,  but  he  acts 
like  one. 

When  a  couple  of  lawyers,  twelve 
jurors,  a  judge,  a  bailiff,  a  lot  of 
newspapers,  and  a  religious  public 
opinion  send  some  poor  devil  to  jail 
because  he  has  stolen  something  so- 


DARRQW'S  THIRD  SPEECH  107 

ciety  says  they  are  practicing  resist- 
ance to  evil,  because  the  man  is  a 
thief.  My  friend  says  that  society  is 
practicing  aggression.  From  socie- 
ty's standpoint  it  is  resistance  to  evil. 
It  is  dependent  on  the  standpoint.  I 
believe  that  is  aggression.  Society  is 
engaged  in  what  it  believes  resisting 
evil.  They  say,  here  is  a  man  that 
has  stolen  something — violated  some 
rule  of  the  game — and  we  resist  it  by 
force,  and  we  punish  it.  They  call  it 
resisting  evil,  and  say  it  is  wrong.  It 
is  wrong  to  commit  aggression  upon 
that  man.  If  he  stole,  society  is  re- 
sponsible, because  under  the  arrang- 
ments  of  society  that  is  the  best  pro- 
fession he  can  get.  Or  else  you  might 
say  with  Mr.  Lewis  that  evolution  is 
responsible  for  it,  on  account  of  the 
way  it  shaped  the  skull,  and  the 
shape  of  the  skull  made  the  brain  di- 


108  MARX  VERSUS  TOLSTOY 

rect  what  he  did.  In  any  event,  to 
harm  a  hair  on  his  head,  to  inflict 
any  pain  or  suffering  upon  the  man, 
is  wrong,  and  not  conducing  to  the 
highest  moral  and  physical  develop- 
ment of  the  human  race.  The  theory 
of  resistance,  and  the  practice  of 
resistance  of  visiting  force  and  vio- 
lence and  suffering  upon  your  fel- 
low man,  is  an  evil  theory,  and  can 
only  produce  evil  results,  near  and 
remote,  wherever  you  may  find  it. 

He  says  the  commandment  "thou 
shalt  not  steal"  is  no  more  sacred 
than  the  commandment  "Thou  shalt 
resist  stealing."  It  is  just  as  incum- 
bent on  us  not  to  permit  stealing. 
True,  under  the  moral  code  it  is. 
But  what  are  you  going  to  do?  Of 
course,  nobody  knows  what  stealing 
is.  It  is  purely  arbitrary.  For  a 
few  men  to  fence  off  the  earth  and 


HARROW'S  THIRD  SPEECH  109 

for  another  man  to  go  over  inside 
the  fence  and  take  something  away 
is  stealing,  under  the  rules  of  the 
game.  It  is  stealing  from  one  man's 
standpoint,  but  not  from  that  of  an- 
other. The  men  who  fence  off  the 
earth,  they  say  the  man  who  comes 
over  is  the  thief.  Mr.  Lewis  says 
the  fellow  who  goes  there  should  re- 
sist the  other  man.  And  society  says, 
the  man  who  fenced  off  the  earth 
should  resist  the  other  man.  It  is 
a  question  of  standpoint.  If  you  ad- 
mit either  philosophy,  then  both 
have  the  right  to  resist,  and  it  is  a 
question  of  force,  and  violence,  and 
punishment;  and  the  question  re- 
solves down  to  this:  under  which 
way  can  justice  be  the  best  and  easi- 
est obtained? 

He  says  he  believes  in  force  for 
the  working  class.     It  has  always 


110  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

been  the  same  story  since  the  world 
began,  and  will  be  so  long  as  the 
world  lasts.  Who  will  win?  Will 
it  be  the  rulers,  fitted  and  equipped 
with  guns,  ships,  policemen,  and 
with  jails;  always  equipped  for  war? 
Or  will  it  be  the  poor,  the  weak,  and 
the  disinherited,  who  have  nothing 
to  fight  with? 

I  would  not  be  so  much  opposed 
to  force  if  I  thought  it  would  win. 
But  I  have  seen  that  game  tried  so 
often  that  I  know  better.  I  think 
I  know — that  you  cannot  get  justice 
that  way.  And  suppose  you  could. 
Suppose  the  working  class  could 
turn  society  over,  which  they  can- 
not— but  suppose  they  could — and 
that  they  got  the  guns  and  cannons 
and  swords,  and  they  were  the  state, 
then  what?  Do  you  think  they 
would  do  any  better?  I  know  them 


DARROW'S  THIRD  SPEECH  111 

too  well.  Let  me  tell  you.  While 
the  Socialist  Party — I  have  nothing 
against  that,  except  there  are  not 
enough  of  them  vote  the  ticket — 
while  they  cannot  muster  a  corpo- 
ral's guard — every  fellow  wants  to 
be  the  boss,  and  every  fellow  wants 
to  make  charges  against  every  other 
fellow,  and  talk  about  him,  lie  about 
him,  and  gossip  about  him  worse 
than  a  lot  of  women  in  a  sewing  so- 
ciety, and  use  all  kinds  of  tactics  to 
defeat  him,  and  if  they  were  run- 
ning society  they  would  not  last  as 
long  as  a  snowball,  not  until  they 
learn  something.  They  would  be 
just  like  the  rest.  They  have  got  to 
learn  that  the  whole  campaign  is 
wrong.  They  have  got  to  learn  that 
punishment  is  wrong;  that  resisting 
evil  is  wrong.  They  have  got  to 
learn  the  fundamental  things,  char- 


112  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

ity,  humanity,  brotherly  love,  which 
is  the  basis  of  all  of  it. 

Do  you  think  all  the  trades-union- 
ists are  angels?  If  you  do,  think  it 
over  again.  They  are  not.  There  is 
a  lot  of  them  that  are  ignorant;  some 
of  them  are  brutal,  and  some  of  them 
are  grafters. 

Do  you  think  if  you  stood  society 
on  its  head,  and  gave  them  the  guns, 
that  all  would  be  peace  and  harmony 
and  loveliness;  and  that  we  would 
then  practice  non-aggression,  if  not 
non-resistance?  No,  you  would  be 
just  where  you  were  in  the  French 
revolution,  where  as  soon  as  they  got 
rid  of  the  heads  of  the  nobility  they 
commenced  cutting  off  each  other's 
heads.  It  is  what  the  whole  thing 
leads  to.  It  is  in  the  theory  of  life 
as  applied  to  the  practice  of  man;  to 


DARROWS  THIRD  SPEECH  113 

the  doctrine  they  believe,  and  the 
life  they  live. 

Do  you  believe  in  cruelty,  in  pun- 
ishment? Do  you  use  your  tongue 
to  condemn  men  and  women?  Do 
you  use  your  efforts  to  get  them  in 
jail?  Do  you  believe  in  punish- 
ment? If  so,  do  you  think  your  life 
and  conduct  conduces  so  well  to 
civilization  as  the  life  and  conduct 
of  him  who  does  not  use  his  tongue 
and  pen  in  that  way?  Or  is  the 
other  theory  right?  Is  the  theory 
of  love  or  hatred  right? 

My  friend  is  wrong  when  he  says 
that  all  strife  comes  from  capitalism- 
It  lurks  in  the  human  heart.  It  is 
part  of  the  savage.  It  is  in  the  beast, 
from  there  to  man.  You  may  go 
back  to  Egypt  in  the  early  scrolls  and 
in  their  tombs  and  find  the  man  with 


114  MARX    VERSUS    TOLSTOY 

the  spear,  and  the  savage  fights  as 
much  as  the  civilized.  War  comes 
from  the  brute,  and  if  civilization 
means  anything  it  means  getting  the 
brute  out  by  teaching  something 
higher. 

My  friend  talks  much  about  evo- 
lution. Of  course  I  believe  in  evo- 
lution. Everybody  does  nowadays 
who  has  any  sense,  and  that  is  not 
so  very  many.  Is  evolution  war,  or 
is  it  peace?  Is  the  tendency  toward 
war  or  peace?  Why,  the  higher  the 
race  goes  upwards,  the  more  it  co- 
operates. There  is  little  co-opera- 
tion in  plant  life;  there  is  none,  ex- 
cept one  to  feed  upon  another. 
There  is  little  co-operation  in  ani- 
mal life;  little  in  the  lower  orders 
of  man.  And  what  men  of  vision 
and  insight  and  inspiration  are  hop- 
ing for  is  the  time  when  the  human 


D ARROW'S  THIRD  SPEECH  115 

race  will  thoroughly  co-operate, 
when  each  person  will  not  be  seek- 
ing only  his  own  good,  but  the  good 
of  every  other  man.  Evolution  will 
not  be  complete  until  war  and  strife 
and  competition  are  banished,  and 
co-operation  and  love,  and  fellow- 
ship shall  take  its  place. 


CLOSING  SPEECH  BY  LEWIS 


CLOSING  SPEECH  BY  LEWIS          119 


CLOSING  SPEECH  BY  LEWIS 

Mr.  Chairman,  Mr.  Darrow,  La- 
dies and  Gentlemen: 

We  are  now  informed  that  non- 
resistance  is  not  a  religious  theory. 
Perhaps  Mr.  Darrow  does  not  re- 
gard the  New  Testament,  from 
which  he  took  his  text  this  morning, 
as  a  religious  book,  or  Jesus  Christ, 
the  chief  advocate  of  the  theory,  as 
a  religious  character,  or  Christianity 
as  a  religion.  Whatever  I  may  or 
may  not  have  done  I  have  clearly 
shown  this  theory  to  be  an  integral 
part  of  the  religious  systems  of  the 
Orient. 

When  workingmen  are  not  satis- 
fied with  the  terms  offered  by  their 
employers  they  must  decide  what  is 


120  MARX  VERSUS  TOLSTOf 

to  be  done.  If  they  decide  to  stop 
working  their  act  is  described  by 
Darrow  as  an  instance  of  non-resist- 
ance. Darrow's  claim  cannot  be  sus- 
tained. If  the  men  decide  not  to 
resist  their  employers  they  go  on 
working.  They  only  strike  when 
they  are  determined  on  resistance 
and,  in  their  estimation,  the  strike  is 
a  weapon  used  in  a  battle.  My  op- 
ponent can  gain  nothing  by  calling 
this  "passive  resistance."  So  long 
as  it  is  resistance  of  any  kind  it  be- 
longs to  my  side  of  this  argument. 
Mr.  Darrow  freely  admits  that 
society  is  the  real  aggressor  in  the 
case  of  the  criminal,  and  the  real 
evil  is  to  be  found  in  the  behavior  of 
society.  The  question  of  non-resist- 
ance here  is:  Should  the  individual 
who  is  denied  an  opportunity  to  live 
honestly  by  vicious  social  laws  re- 


CLOSING  SPEECH  BY  LEWIS  121 

spect  those  laws  and  die  without  pro- 
test; or  should  he,  claiming  that  life 
is  above  law,  break  through  the 
meshwork  and  try  to  live  despite  the 
laws?  According  to  the  theory  of 
non-resistance  the  individual  in  ques- 
tion should  die  quietly.  Even  Catho- 
lic theology  is  superior  to  this;  the 
Catholic  Church  has  always  held 
that  a  starving  person  should  steal 
both  as  a  right  and  a  duty.  True, 
Catholics  have  perhaps  never  en- 
couraged the  practice  of  this  pre- 
cept except  in  the  case  of  Cardinal 
Manning  in  the  London  dock  strike. 
Darrow  would  be  willing  for  the 
working  class  to  adopt  force  if  he 
thought  it  would  succeed.  This  is 
a  frank  admission  of  the  validity  of 
the  argument  I  presented  in  my 
opening  speech.  Christ  believed  in 
non-resistance  because  He  saw  the 


122  MARX    VERSUS   TOLSTOY 

strength  of  Rome.  Tolstoy  took  the 
same  theory  because  the  Russian 
autocracy  seemed  impregnable.  Dar- 
row  follows  them  in  theory  because 
he  believes  that  in  a  trial  of  strength 
the  workers  would  inevitably  be 
worsted  by  their  masters.  Once 
more  we  see,  this  time  by  Darrow's 
confession,  that  the  philosophy  of 
non-resistance  is  the  philosophy  of 
despair. 

I  believe  in  resistance.  To  me  the 
hope  of  the  workers  lies  in  the  suc- 
cessful issue  of  the  class  struggle. 
Not  the  despairing  Tolstoy  but  the 
courageous  Marx  has  grasped  the 
principles  which  will  carry  the 
workers  to  their  desired  goal. 

The  weakness  of  the  working  class 
is  apparent  rather  than  real.  What 
the  workers  lack  is  not  strength  but 
intelligence.  The  worker  builds  the 


CLOSING  SPEECH  BY  LE\YI8          123 

cities,  runs  the  locomotive  and  the 
steamship,  maintains  industry  and 
thereby  feeds,  clothes  and  houses  the 
inhabitants  of  the  globe.  Like  At- 
las, he  carries  the  world  on  his  shoul- 
ders. His  strength  is  moreover 
steadily  increasing.  The  capitalist 
class  on  the  other  hand  is  degenerat- 
ing. The  great  capitalists  were  in 
many  respects  great  men ;  but  when 
their  sons  realize  that  they  are  be- 
yond economic  want  by  reason  of 
papa's  millions  any  strength  or  char- 
acter that  might  have  been  forming 
oozes  away  and  they  become  "stage- 
door  Johnnies."  The  workers  in  the 
final  struggle  will  not  measure 
blades  with  the  real  organizers  of 
industry  but  with  their  purely  para- 
sitic, hare-brained  and  nerveless 
descendants. 

Social  evolution  is  paving  the  way 


124  MARX   VERSUS   TOLSTOY 

for  a  new  social  order,  an  order  in 
which  there  shall  be  no  state  be- 
cause there  will  be  no  subject  class 
to  be  kept  down.  That  new  order 
will  owe  its  birth  to  the  long  travail 
of  the  working  class;  it  will  mark 
the  culmination  of  a  long  story  of  re- 
sistance to  the  evils  of  class  oppres- 
sion. Then  shall  we  close  the  first 
book  of  the  history  of  the  human 
race,  a  book  saturated  with  the  blood 
and  tears  of  the  workers  of  a  thou- 
sand generations;  we  shall  open  a 
new  volume  and  begin  to  write  the 
first  chapter  of  human  liberty. 


Books  by  Karl  Marx 

Marx  is  the  greatest  of  Socialist  writers;  study  him 
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Capital,  Volume  III.  The  Process  oi 
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A  Contribution  to  the  Critique  of 
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Revolution  and  Counter-Revolution,  or 
Germany  in  1848.  Cloth,  50c. 

Value,  Price  and  Profit.  Cloth,  50c.; 
paper,  lOc. 

The  Communist  Manifesto,  by  Marx 
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CHARLES  H.  KERR  &  COMPANY 

118  West  Kinzie  Street,  Chicago 


PURITANISM 

What  is  the  economic  basis  for  the  demand, 
which  we  see  occasionally  cropping  out  even 
now,  to  limit  the  length  of  a  girl's  bathing 
suit  by  law? 

Perhaps  you  have  never  thought  of  it,  but 
the  pious  horror  of  a  short  bathing  suit  is 
closely  related  to  early  rising,  political  reform, 
Sunday  baseball  games,  religous  revivals,  the 
"double  standard  of  morality,"  the  nude  in 
art,  woman  suffrage,  and  the  consumption  of 

MINCE  PIE 

If  such  a  statement  seems  to  you  far- 
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This  little  book  _  will  enable  the  American 
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fascinating  study  in  that  theory  which  has 
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THE  MILITANT  PROLETARIAT 


Austin  Lewis,  already  long  recognized 
as  one  of  the  foremost  Socialist  writers 
in  America,  has  now  made  what  time 
will  prove  to  be  the  most  valuable 
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the  fundamental  principles  of  Socialism 
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developments.  The  great  Socialist 
classics  were  written  a  generation  or 
more  ago.  Marx  prophesied  the  Ameri- 
can trust.  Now  in  all  its  fullness  it  is 
here.  How  is  it  to  be  met  by  the  politi- 
cal and  industrial  organizations  of  the 
working  class?  For  five  years  heated 
discussions  have  centered  around  this 
question.  In  The  Militant  Proletariat 
Austin  Lewis  presents  the  most  valuable 
results  of  this  discussion.  No  wide- 
awake Socialist  will  fail  to  read  it.  Cloth, 
50  cents. 

CHARLES    H.    KERR   &    COMPANY, 
118  West  Kinzie  Street,  Chicago. 


ANCIENT  SOCIETY 

OR 

Researches  in  the  Lines  of  Human 

Progress :   From  Savagery 

Through  Barbarism  to 

Civilization 

One  American  and  only  one  is  recog- 
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American  is  Lewis  H.  Morgan,  the  author 
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on  the  subject.  His  conclusions  have  beep 
\\ly  sustained  by  later  investigators. 

fhis  work  contains  a  full  and  clear  explanation 
of  many  vitally  important  facts,  without  which  no 
intelligent  discussion  of  the  "Woman  Question" 
is  possible.  It  showa  that  the  successive  marriage 
customs  that  have  arisen  have  corresponded  to 
certain  definite  industrial  conditions.  The  author 
shows  that  it  is  industrial  changes  that  alter  the 
relations  of  the  sexes,  and  that  these  changes  are 
still  going  on.  He  shows  the  historical  reason  for 
the  "double  standard  of  morals"  for  men  and 
women,  over  which  reformers  have  wailed  in  vain. 
And  he  points  the  way  to  a  cleaner,  freer,  happier 
life  for  women  in  the  future,  through  the  triumph 
of  the  working  class.  All  this  is  shown  indirectly 
through  historical  facts;  the  reader  is  left  to  draw 
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International  Socialist  Review.  Address 

Charles  H.  Kerr  &  Company 

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